User:Arturo at BP/Stock history

Stock history
BP stock is composed of original BP shares as well as shares acquired through mergers with Amoco in 1998 and the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) in 2000. The majority of BP investors are in the United States where 38% of shares are held. British investors hold 35% of shares. The remaining shares are held by investors worldwide.

BP shares are primarily traded on the London Stock Exchange, but also listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany. In the United States shares are traded in US dollars on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depository shares. One ADS represents six ordinary shares.

In 1979, the British Government sold 80 million shares of BP at $7.58 as part of Thatcher-era privatization. This sale represented slightly more than 5% of BP’s total shares and reduced the government’s ownership of the company to 46%. Following the worldwide stock market crash in October 1987 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher initiated the sale of an additional $12.2 billion dollars of BP shares, representing the government's remaining 31% stake in the company. In November 1987 the Kuwait Investment Office purchased a 10.06% interest in BP, becoming the largest institutional shareholder. The following May, the KIO purchased additional shares, bringing their ownership to 21.6%. This raised concerns within BP that operations in the United States, BP’s primary country of operations, would suffer. In October 1988, the British Department of Trade and Industry required the KIO to reduce its shares to 9.6% within 12 months. The KIO is the third largest institutional shareholder, according to the Financial Times.

Following the United States’ Federal Trade Commission’s approval of the BP-Amoco merger in 1998, Amoco’s stock was removed from Standard & Poor’s 500 and was merged with BP shares on the London Stock Exchange. The merger with Amoco resulted in a 40% increase in share price by April of 1999. However, shares fell nearly 25% by early 2000, when the Federal Trade Commission expressed opposition to BP-Amoco’s acquisition of ARCO. The acquisition was ultimately approved in April of 2000 increasing stock value 57 cents over the previous year.

In 2005, following the Texas City Refinery explosion, stock prices again fell. By January 2007, the explosion, coupled with a pipeline spill in Alaska and production delays in the Gulf of Mexico, left BP’s stock down 4.5% from its position prior to the Texas City explosion. However by April 2007, stocks had rebounded 13% erasing the 8.3% loss from 2006. Declining oil prices and concerns over oil sustainability also caused shares to fall in value in late 2008.

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill initiated a sharp decline in share prices, and BP’s shares lost roughly 50% of their value in 50 days. BP’s shares reached a low of $26.97 per share on June 25, 2010 totaling a $100 billion loss in market value before beginning to climb again. Shares reached a post-spill high of $49.50 in early 2011 and as of April 2012 shares remain down approximately 30% from pre-spill levels.